Our Daily News Letter

(By Our London Correspondent)

The position of the Board of Deputies of British Jews on the subject of the Polish-Jewish Agreement, which Mr. Lucien Wolf of the Joint Foreign Committee, representing the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, helped to negotiate but which the Club of Jewish Sejm Deputies in Poland recently repudiated, is stated in the 74th Annual Report of the Board just issued here. The report regards the Polish-Jewish Agreement as a wise step but feels that its fruits “can only be garnered with time, as they depend more on a ‘change of heart’ than any legislative concessions.”

“Nothing can be more cheering in itself and as a symptom of a better spirit in Eastern Europe than the Polish-Jewish Agreement and the remarkable circumstances in which it was negotiated,” the report declares. “For twelve years Poland had been the haunt of an anti-Semitism which, in calculated and insidious cruelty, has no parallel in the history of religious or racial persecution.

“With the beginning of the great economic crisis early in the year and the growing discontent in the Minorities provinces, thoughtful men in Poland began to realize that a new policy was necessary, and Count Skrzynski set himself to form a concentration of political parties which would enable the Government to carry out a policy of reconciliation.

“In the preparation and execution of this policy the Polish Government paid the Joint Foreign Committee the high compliment of inviting its counsels and cooperation. Count Skrzynski met Mr. Lucien Wolf in Geneva and discussed with him the whole problem. On returning to Warsaw the Minister took the opportunity, during a debate in Parliament, of speaking appreciatively of the conciliatory attitude of the Joint Foreign Committee, and towards the end of May he requested the Committee to allow Mr. Wolf to go to Warsaw to assist in the work of appeasement. The invitation was accepted on condition that it had the approval of the Jewish Parliamentary Party, and that Mr. Wolf’s activities should be limited to giving such assistance in the negotiations as the Jewish Community might consider necessary. There seems to be little doubt that the mission had a happy effect. An atmosphere was created which made for moderate counsels on both sides and ultimately for an agreement, which has been hailed throughout the country as beginning a new era, both for Poland and her Jews. The full fruits of the new agreement can only be garnered with time, as they depend more on a “change of heart” than on any legislative concessions.

“There can be little doubt that the wise example of Poland will be felt far beyond her frontiers, and we may look in the near future to a subsidence of the anti-Semitic movement in such countries as Roumania, Lithuania and Hungary. Meanwhile, however, the continued activity of this movement has to be reckoned with, and the Joint Foreign Committee has found it necessary not only to make representations to the Governments of those States, but, in the case of Hungary, to invoke the powers of the League of Nations under the Minority Clauses of the Treaty of Trianon.”